


Letters from the Third Rail

by ABTwrites



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Developing Relationship, Drinking, Eventual Smut, F/F, Mags is canonically a synth, One Shot Collection, Smoking, dont forget
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-04-18 14:48:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14215482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABTwrites/pseuds/ABTwrites
Summary: Resolve steeled her buzzy gaze. “What if some drugged up jethead walked up to your stage and said, ‘Stop singing or I’ll kill you.’ Would you stop?”Magnolia gave her a sweet smile.“No. I would die singing, and that would be alright.”“I know,” Piper murmured, lighting a cigarette. “And I’ll die with the truth in my mouth. And that’ll be alright, too.”----A collection of oneshots focusing on encounters between Magnolia and Piper Wright.





	1. Midnight Chat

**Author's Note:**

> I warm up an awful lot with Fallout shorts before I dive into commissions and original work, so I figured I should put them somewhere :0 In other words, welcome to rarepair hell. Stories are mostly oneshots, but follow a growing continuity (unless stated otherwise).

“Tell me who you are.” 

She let her voice melt into honey, beckoning for an answer. The younger woman sitting at the bar beside her finished her drink with a nervous little cough and a smile. She was, even by Magnolia’s standards, a pretty little thing.

“Who I am?” Piper questioned, arching a brow. “I thought you read my papers.”

The singer let a genuine chuckle rattle her throat warmly. “But is that who you are? Your papers?”

“Well, isn’t that what you say about your songs?”

A smart, pretty little thing, but her intelligence she could have gathered from her writing. 

“How about this. I’ll tell you something about myself, and you do the same. Fair?” She gestures between them over the table, pointing back and forth. She gestures an awful lot, Magnolia noticed, and if she wasn’t careful she might find it endearing.

“Hm. You go first then.”

“Ask away.”

Magnolia leaned her chin against her hand and pitched forward. Piper’s cheeks burn as her eyes dip downward and the singer catches it.

“How many times has someone threatened to kill you because of your papers?”

What better way to talk to a reporter than to be direct? Magnolia almost chuckled at the near-surprise that flashed over Piper’s eyes. It disappeared a moment later, replaced with a careful façade of charm.

“How many times has the sun risen?” she joked, running her pointer finger along the edge of her glass. “Enough times that I can assume I’m good at my job.”

“Have you ever thought of stopping?”

“Sure. Usually when I’m being shot at.”

That wit. She could see reflections of articles in her voice, undeniable proof of their truths. 

“And?”

“Would I?”

Magnolia nodded, tracing a fingertip over the wet circle left from Piper’s drink. The journalist watched her machinations for a moment too long and Magnolia sees her shoulders hitch just so. She quickly waved at Charlie for another ale.

“No.” Her tone was steady and sure. “Never.”

“Why not? Why not get a cozy little job where you aren’t being poisoned or choked or stalked across the Commonwealth?”

Resolve steeled her buzzy gaze. “What if some drugged up jethead walked up to your stage and said, ‘Stop singing or I’ll kill you.’ Would you stop?”

Magnolia gave her a sweet smile. 

“No. I would die singing, and that would be alright.”

“I know,” Piper murmured, lighting a cigarette. “And I’ll die with the truth in my mouth. And that’ll be alright, too.”

She took a drag. Magnolia looked between her confident eyes and the blank notepad on the bar between them.

“I think it’s easy to say that sort of thing.” Her voice was soft and warm and sent rivets of gentle heat through the reporter. Piper cleared her throat, reluctant to let her earlier awkwardness take over again.

“Well, have you ever been in a situation like that? You know, life and death?”

 

Magnolia hummed thoughtfully.  
“I don’t think I know a person in the Commonwealth who hasn’t. And if there is one, they certainly don’t pitch their tent in this town.”

“Huh.” Piper considered her for a moment, tapping her pen against her lips. “Hard to imagine you in a fight.” 

Magnolia arched her brow and fought back a laugh when the reporter realized what she said and struggled to recover. Her guise of professionalism melted away in a flurry of apologies. 

“Oh, damn. That came out wrong, I didn’t mean to suggest that you couldn’t, you know, handle yourself. Obviously you can. I mean, er, not that I’m suggesting the opposite necessarily.” She fidgeted with the rim of her press cap as if she wanted to disappear into it. 

The singer watched, lips curled. 

“Am I making you nervous, darlin’?”

She took another sip of her beer and a deep breath.

“I bet you have an easy time making people nervous.”

Her smile widened. Piper focused on the bobbing steel of Whitechapel Charlie for a moment, gathering her thoughts.

“I don’t enjoy violence,” Magnolia admitted, leaning back on her elbow and tracing the edge of her water glass. 

The younger woman felt a surge of excitement at the shred of information. Magnolia was undeniably secretive about herself; getting even an ounce of new info set her inner intellect buzzing. Though the singer didn’t comment on it, she saw the girl’s eyes sparkle in response. 

“I could gather that from your profession,” she replied, masking her interest. Maybe she could pry a little more forward. “I think it’s safe to say there are less singers left in the world than mercs and killers. Is that why you came into this work?”

Her face was an unreadable as ever. Just that ever-present, mild smirk and soft gaze. Whatever door had cracked open, slammed shut and bolted quickly. Instead of answering, she asked her own question.

“And how many journalists are left, then?”

Piper’s brow furrowed and her attention fell back to her notepad.

“Probably even less.”


	2. Three Months After a Nightcap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Piper and Magnolia spend a night together, and The Synthetic Truth comes out.

Magnolia never got attached. 

Charlie had enough working probability components to know what type of person might grab her eye for a night, but in terms of return visits he was always ready to shoo the poor sods off at first sight. Mags might not dish out feelings, but the scavvers and wanderers in town didn’t always share the sentiment, and she sometimes found herself on the south end of a weapon and a shunned bedfellow. 

Ham kept an eye out, knew when she left with someone and knew who to turn away. If they somehow got passed him, Charlie would pick up the slack. 

It was this ramshackle yet effective system that kept Piper from returning to The Third Rail for three months after their first overnight encounter. 

They hadn’t had sex. There was subtext in their leaving together, but when it came time to follow through they had gotten distracted with talk. And well, Piper seemed nervous and Magnolia wasn’t the kind of woman to force a girl into an uncomfortable situation. One-night stands weren’t the reporter’s style, and though attraction was there it wasn’t helped along by booze or chems. 

Unlike other situations like it though, Magnolia wasn’t in a hurry for Piper to leave. So they talked, or Piper talked and the singer listened to her stories, until early morning spilled over Goodneighbor.

It had been a long time since Magnolia slept next to someone. She remembered dozing off during an energetic tale about the Children of Atom and irradiated water; she woke again when a sleeping Piper turned onto her side, disturbing the bed. Her brain itched at her to wake her up and kick her out.

But the reporter had been thoughtful enough to leave space between them, and it was so cold in the wasteland during this time of day, and it could rain, how terrible would she feel if that happened? And bed was comfortable, despite both of them falling asleep in their day clothes, and she hadn’t gotten a good night’s rest in a while. Plenty of good reasons to let the girl stay until later. Besides, Magnolia wanted to hear the end of that story. 

They woke up again when the singer’s 7pm alarm buzzed on the nightstand next to Piper. Magnolia sleepily climbed over her to turn it off, fumbling over her torso and chuckling when Piper groaned for five more minutes. 

On the way out the door, the reporter apologized for staying, and for the lack of ‘excitement’, as she put it. 

“Don’t worry about it, darlin’. Happens to everyone at some point.”

“Oh, jeez. Thank you young lady, you know when you get to be my age things just don't work the way they're supposed to.” She made her voice gravelly, hunched over and made a gesture like she was shaking a cane in the air.

Magnolia surprised herself when she nearly tripped over laughing. She was good at that, making her laugh.

They waved goodbye at the door to the Rail. Magnolia went to work, and Piper left town.

\---------------

With passing weeks Magnolia could feel her hopes growing dimmer as she waited for the reporter to visit again. The Commonwealth was predictably unpredictable; any number of things could be keeping her from Goodneighbor. 

New issues of Publick Occurrences came in on Daisy’s caravan deliveries. At least she knew she was alive; not everyone had the luxury of signs like that. Magnolia would pick them up in the square in the early morning after her shift at the Rail and read them before she slept, sometimes over a glass of wine or a sweet cake. She found herself needing to keep her hands busy while she read, or else her mind would wander.

One night, she put the pulp newsprint to her nose. It was obviously her imagination when under the layers of radstorm bitterness and caravan stink, she caught the subtle tang of gumdrops and coffee. And why, if it wasn’t her imagination, did that smell make her heart knot?

A missing person crisis in Diamond City.

A Super Mutant attack thwarted at the Wall.

On the third month,

The Synthetic Truth.

Magnolia found herself crumpling up the edges of this edition as she read it. She’d set it down, walk to the window of her small room, return, busy herself with something stupid. It told a long while to finish, and it left her feeling cold and strange. 

Absently, she watched herself move in her mirror, studied her own face, pinched and tugged at the skin of her clavicle, her arms, her wrists. 

‘…Sharing an experience the people of Diamond City assumed was reserved for members of the human race…’

Goodneighbor wasn’t a place for sensitive folk. Whatever anyone had to say about her predilections, be it about her sex life or her work life or her past, she wasn’t bothered in the slightest.

She touched the skin around her eyes silently. She was not a sensitive woman.  
So why did she feel so…wrong? Why did this particular article, written by this particular journalist, make her stomach turn?

Fear. An old bedfellow. Magnolia didn’t sleep that night.

\--------------

She had predicted Piper would roll into town following that release. No matter how subtle (or unsubtle) her accusations were, she had pointed a finger at the highest form of power in Diamond City. It would only make sense she’d be thrown out. 

Anyone on the run from anything in New Boston eventually ended up in Goodneighbor.

Not that Magnolia was counting the days since the publication, or perusing the square in between acts checking for signs of her. She didn’t ask Daisy if she’d stopped by, and she certainly didn’t ask KLEO the same question when ‘I don’t think so, dear’ didn’t satisfy her. 

However, she would admit to asking Ham if he’d heard any news of her lately. 

That’s when he told her he’d turned her away several times over the last few months, waving her off as another shunned lover.

The ghoul noticed right away that her feathers were severely ruffled, a rare sight from the singer. He apologized, promising to call her in if he saw her. Magnolia was a little frightening when she had it in her to be. It was almost as bad as seeing disappointment in her eyes; she had many powerful forces in her that affected even people who’d grown rock-hard callouses inside. Ham found himself pulling at his shirt collar after she disappeared down the stairs, cursing his judgement.

She started her shift annoyed, but invigorated. She couldn’t blame Ham for trying to protect her, as he always has. But damn it, just because she leaves with someone doesn’t mean she never wants to see them again.

The memory of a knife being held at her throat after one of her affairs snuck passed him and rushed the stage gave her a refreshed sense of forgiveness. 

She still had scars from that incident; not that she thought Piper would ever pull something like that, but she really, really couldn’t be mad at Ham. 

She started her shift. Hours rolled on. 

She might not even bother trying to see her after being turned away before. 

Magnolia sung with more energy than usual; people who heard it from above were coming down to the bar, filling the space and keeping Charlie busy. 

Her eyes scanned every new person that came down the stairs. 

At 2am, a worn out red press cap appeared in the crowd.


	3. Good Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Institute pays Goodneighbor a visit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a vignette of what could be a larger scene or story. There's no particular continuity to it, just a 'what-if' scenario. Definitely not part of of whatever thread is forming between these, if there is one <:3

It had been a long time since the sting of real fear cut through Magnolia’s belly. It had been a long time since she hadn’t had an entire bar’s worth of loyal scavvers to step in front of a drunk pervert or a shunned fling for her. It had been just as long since she’d felt her own brain rattle from a punch to the face and the cut of iron to flesh.

She remembered the time between her escape from the Institute and her cozy little home in Goodneighbor. It had been a long time since she had a reason to fear for her life. She didn’t miss the notion.

She remembered Desdemona, fresh into her position as Railroad general, telling her to dirty up before crossing the Fens. That if she was seen, by Gunners or Raiders or Wanderers, something horrible would likely happen.

She remembered hiding under the floorboards of house ruins in Jamaica Plains as the heavy footsteps and rhythmic whirring of Institute Synths tapped quietly above her. 

She covered her mouth from behind the overturned stage, holding her breath the same way she had back then. 

One of them was speaking in that cool, metallic way they did, but Magnolia couldn’t understand. Magnolia, soundless, looked towards Charlie’s station at the bar. A rusty claw peeked out from the ground, motionless, decorated with empty shells and a dishrag. Still. He had been the first to fire, pumping rounds into the mass of synths pouring down the stairs before anyone knew what was going on. 

That was the first wave of terror. A blaze of deafening gunfire within the subway’s heart. Someone had pulled her down from the stage as she stood stunned, a ghoul who’d been happily dozing on the couch for an hour, listening to her songs. Thunder and lightning filled the bar. He was in the middle of turning her stage into cover when his head exploded with blue gunpowder, body collapsing beside her and alive with twitching electricity. She saw this through a filter of ringing, ears blown out. She couldn’t even hear herself now.

Oh, Charlie. He would have showered her with apologies when it ended. Would have given her the night off and a bottle of whiskey to dull the pain. One of his giant eyes stared at her from the floor. Her chest twisted up with pain.

She looked at her legs, cut and tangled in front of her.

She shouldn’t have let Charlie convince her to stay. She should have kept on the move. She should have changed her face and sold her room at the Rexford and disappeared as she had many times before. 

But oh, what a life she had for a couple of years. Good years. 

The dull rumbling of Synth feet grew nearer. She dared not look over the stage. She had herself convinced she wouldn’t be found, that the Institute wasn’t looking, that maybe she wasn’t a Synth at all. No one knew. Only Charlie, who had lit the lantern outside the door to the Third Rail months before she escaped, who had only spoken to the Railroad once, who didn’t know until he did and even then gave a cockney ‘So what?’ at the news. 

She hoped she unholstered the poor ghoul’s gun quietly, still deaf. She wouldn’t be taken back. Her life was here, or nowhere. 

She couldn’t fight them. She wished she could write a song about the alien, heavy, oily feeling of last moments. She smiles and opens her lips as the pistol rattles and cocks. 

Her voice is a low, tender hum, as she taps the barrel under her chin.

Something hits her shoulder. 

A small, small something. 

Her eyes open in confusion, pistol curled in her fingers. She looks to her right, down the barricaded doorway of the back space.

The door was open now. Had it always been open? Surely not, because poised at the edge of the hall was a familiar face, lidded with a dull press cap and twisted into an urgent grimace.  
Magnolia’s chest swelled with a nauseating cocktail of dread and fresh hope. 

The other woman eyes the space passed the stage, maybe considering the fight, before gesturing with the flat of her palm.  
Stay, she mouthed. Shaken, Magnolia nodded. With eyes as stony as the singer had ever seen them, Wright watched the room. From out of her red leather coat she pulled free a dirty rag. From the glass littered floor, she found an intact bottle of vodka and unscrewed the cap.

Oh.

She held up her hand again. Three fingers up. Magnolia nodded again.

The match jumps to life on the side of her glove. Two. The rag laps up the flame greedily. One!

The Molotov soars. One of the synths chirps in recognition, but there’s nothing it can do to keep the grenade from colliding with the back of the bar. Seven bottles ignite, then eleven, then twenty. Charlie’s whole inventory, burned to nothing in a fiery blaze. Piper yells and Magnolia is on her feet, closing the distance between them, heat kissing her cheek in the moment of no cover. She looks. Eight Synths scramble inside the fire, faces melting, limbs contorted.

Her death. That was her death. An arm catches her as she stumbles over the threshold, heels shaking against the rush of adrenaline. Urgency pushes them both back into the entrance of the tunnels. Piper was calm enough to resist slamming the steel door, and instead closes it without a creak before sealing it off with its original bars.

Without a word, she takes Magnolia’s arm again and guides her deeper into the subway tunnel. Twenty steps in, she lets go of the singer and drops down into a dry drainage ditch. With an open armed motion, she urges Magnolia to follow her.

Shell-shocked she followed, landing braced against the reporter, and they silently entered the abandoned sewer.


	4. Valentine Has Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick and Piper escort Magnolia to Diamond City (for some reason or another). The Detective and the singer have a tense conversation while Piper sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Just a vignette, as usual. Takes place probably a few months after Piper and Magnolia start regularly getting together.

“It’s so quiet out here.”

Piper dug around in her coat pocket for a gumdrop, eyes watching the haze of a radstorm in the distance.

“Not always,” she grinned, offering Magnolia the open end of the package. The singer held out her palm and Piper squeezed a candy out into it. “If it’s quiet, we’ve gotten lucky.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve traveled, I suppose.”

Piper watched her for a moment as she popped the gumdrop between her lips.

“Does it bother you when it’s quiet?”

Magnolia tilted her chin, brow furrowed just a bit.

“With the walking, the watching your back and so. Guess it’s reminding me of old times.”

She coughed, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. On her other side, Nick drew a small bottle of Rad-X from his lapel. Magnolia shook her head with a grateful smile.

“Thanks, Valentine. Don’t think I’m there yet, though. That stuff gives me nasty headaches.”

“We’re near that old record shop. Last I saw the windows were still intact, might be a good place to wait this out.”

Piper nodded at him as she recounted her ammo pouch. 14 tens. Would have been a good idea to search those bodies they happened across a few miles back, but Mags had been quick to get away from them. Truthfully, seeing the way the singer reacted to certain things made Piper think that maybe she’d been too eager to get back into the heat of the Wasteland. She should be flinching at the sight of dead bodies, shouldn’t she?

New Boston was quiet under the fog of the storm. The Raiders retreated to their shelters and high rises, the gunners scattered. Even the dogs dispersed; whatever was rolling in, it would be nasty.

The shop was right where Nick said, glass windows miraculously unshattered. They filed in, close and silent, and Nick stacked newspaper racks in front of the door just in case. Someone had been nice enough to leave a firepit and cooking pot in the middle of the gutted store; Piper pulled out a couple cans of cram and emptied them into the basin after a quick bang-out.

Magnolia circled the walls slowly, looking at the music posters. Most of them were beyond recognition; she’d sweep a hand over them as if she could wipe the rot away, eyes fixed and mouth in a small line. Nick lit a cigarette and watched her; he couldn’t help but marvel at the likenesses she had to some of those posters, and the whisper of a thought crossed his synapses.

He looked to the reporter to say something. She had been watching Magnolia, too. Guiltily, it must been, because as soon as she realized Nick was looking at her she flung her eyes back to the fire, red splattering her cheeks.  
-  
Piper slept hard, Nick knew that from travelling with her on this case and that case, tracking down mobsters and madmen. Once she was out, she was dead to the world. A gunshot might wake her up. Might.

Magnolia was flipping delicately through a pulp novel with the cover torn off, one of her feet outstretched towards the campfire. Nick let his eyes wander over her features, her red lips and dark eyelashes and the careful curve of her sharp cheekbones. Hair freshly trimmed, nail clipped and clean. Body, well. He didn’t have to spell that out. Magnolia really did have it all, but it elicited curiosity more than anything else in the synth.

Magnolia chuckled suddenly, eyes flickering up from the page. “You’re gonna put a hole in me with all that staring, Detective.”

He looked down at his lap, clearing his throat. “Sorry. Was just thinking.”

“Care to share?” She let her book fall closed, musty pages springing back. “This isn’t a very good read anyway.”

He bit down gently on his cigarette and flexed his naked hand in thought.

“I know you don’t like talking about your life before Goodneighbor,” he started, tone carrying off in that way that gave her a way out, if she wanted.

She looked at him for a long time, eyes narrowing curiously.

“True, though I don’t recall ever telling you that.”

Nick let he gaze wander to Piper, who turned onto her side in her sleep. Magnolia followed his eyes and tipped her head in understanding.

“So she talks about me when she’s away from the Rail?” She chuckled to herself in a way Nick couldn’t get a bead on.

“You saying that is telling me something about the dynamics of whatever it is the two of you got going on.”

Magnolia’s cryptic smile faded a bit at the corners. Nick continued, having gotten her attention.

“She’s a good kid.” He dragged on his smoke, airy wisps escaping from the holes in his cheeks. “Got a good head on her shoulders. Good heart, too. That’s rare nowadays.”

“No need to dance around your point, Detective.” Her voice was sure and punctuated. Whatever he was going to say, she wasn’t going to run and hide from it. He could admire at least that much.

“If Piper’s got the wrong idea about what the two of you are, I’d hope you’d be honest with her.”

He paused. She didn’t move to intercept him.

“You’ve got a reputation, Magnolia. I don’t mean any offense, people do whatever they need to do to survive out here.”

Her head cocked sharply to the side with that comment, brow furrowing. Seeing real aggravation in her felt rare and a little wrong. She forced out the shadow of a chuckle and bit her lips together.

“You know,” she breathed, tone level. “I don’t think that’s any of your business, Mister Valentine.”

“On the contrary,” he said, trying to maintain a casual tone. “Piper’s one of the few people I’d happily call a friend. And I see enough in her to know that she’s gonna get her heart broken if this is all just a game to you.”

Her smile was completely gone now.

“A game?” Her ash-gray eyes narrowed.

“Well, maybe not a game. I think you understand where I’m going with this.”

They’d been traveling for a number of days, and more than that Nick had spent a fair amount of time in her distant company wallowing at the Third Rail. All that exposure, and Nick realized he’d never seen her frown.

Her features took on a hard edge, and suddenly he saw a different woman under her appealing visage. In the cracks of her mask, underneath unscarred skin and red lips. A woman that had survived this wasteland of a world with the silk of softness to protect her and nothing else.

“I’m sorry,” he said, guilt tinging his tone. “I shouldn’t be making assumptions. You don’t deserve that.”

“Well, you’re certainly not the first person to make assumptions about me. I stopped paying mind to that sort of thing a long time ago.”

She tapped her fingertip to her jaw. As long as the walls were down this much, he should just ask her. He was suspicious. Something that could be a wrench in the whole thing whether they wanted it to be or not.

“Does she know that you’re a synth, Magnolia?”

Her eyes, already marred with dissatisfaction, widened in a flash. The slight sway in her back and the casual lean of her shoulders went deathly rigid and, in that moment, she looked like a completely different person. Just a moment. Invisible to anyone who wasn’t a detective. In the next, her mouth cut into a wide grin and she let out a deep laugh.

“What?” she giggled. “What on Earth? A what?”

She pulled herself into a ball as if to contain herself, covering the lower half of her face with an open hand. It was a convincing display; he even questioned his own deductive skills for a second, had he been wrong?

“Sorry,” she chuckled after her outburst. “You were just speaking so seriously, and then you said that. You think I’m a what? I don’t mean disrespect, Detective, but-” she gestured between the two of them, “-I think the differences are quite obvious.”  
He kept his face humorless despite his sudden uncertainty. No matter how convincing, of course she’d try to throw him off-trail.

“Synths don’t usually look like me,” he kept his tone casual. “You live in Goodneighbor, surely you know what an actual Gen-3 synth is.”

She shook her head and looked at her own lap with a befuddled smile, the added nomenclature seeming to confuse her more.

“I know there’s some kind of something going on with whatever The Railroad is, what with all the holotapes and graffiti. Aren’t synths involved with that, or something?” Every gesture she made breathed with vagueness and doubt, like she was grasping at straws to form an explanation.

“I have a hard time believing that’s all you know.”

She put her hands down, face looking a bit hopeless.

“I’m a singer, Mister Valentine. I perform all night and I sleep all day. Everything I hear, I hear from sleepy jetheads or drunks or people just trying to hide from their own lives.”

He squinted at her and dosed his cigarette in the fire. Maybe he had been wrong after all. It was difficult to believe that she couldn’t know about synths. Holotapes and graffiti, everything that everyone knew.

Graffiti.

A synapse sparked in his head.

“You said there was graffiti in Goodneighbor?”

“That’s the least suspicious thing that happens in Goodneighbor, darlin’.”

“Do you mean the lantern stencils?”

She tipped her head, just once. Once.

Her smile tightened into a line. She went still. Yeah, she knew what she did, and that it was too late to go back.

“Damn it,” she laughed drily.

“Think you know already,” he grimaced, “…but how would you know lanterns had anything to do with the Railroad?”

She didn’t reply, stare boring into his ruined face.

“You hide it well.” He might as well continue. He and Piper might be dead soon anyway. “Too well, maybe. The only reason I figured it out is because you and I have more in common than anyone else I’ve met out here. The pre-war personality, the movie poster look. You could’ve been carved out of one of those album sleeves. People these days don’t go so far to hide their true selves unless there’s something underneath it all. So I’d say, either you’re hiding from something, or you’re spitting in the face of it. Maybe even both.”

Her gaze weighed down on him oppressively. Her fingers were tight on her jaw and in her lap, as if she was trying to squeeze an answer out with force. Her lips bit together as her bare feet drew towards her, as if she’d leap up and run at a second’s notice. The next smile that touched her face was forced and wrong. It looked pained.

“So. That cat’s out of the bag.”

“I take it she doesn’t know, then.”

Magnolia looked back to Piper, who hadn’t stirred since their conversation began.

“Nice to know you’re a Railroad synth, at least. Wouldn’t be good if Amari had an infiltrator working right next door.”

“If I was an infiltrator, Goodneighbor would have been wiped off the face of the Commonwealth years ago.” Her tone was grim, despite her maintained smile.

“I don’t doubt it. You’re invisible while somehow also being the brightest red X in New Boston. Everyone knows you, but no one does. That’s what you’re going for, right?” He flexed his robotic digits. “No one would ever guess you were a synth.”

“I confess that I’m not fond of being over-analyzed, Detective.”

“Yet you’ve got Piper hanging on your every word. And if that girl is anything, it’s an analyzer.”

“Piper minds her boundaries,” she half-snapped. “Unlike some others.”

“Something big is kicking off in high places.” Nick softened his tone. “And Piper’s going to be part of that. Maybe from the periphery, maybe from the center. But once it happens, there’s no going back.”  
He held out a fresh pack of gumdrops in a truce, trying to show her his intentions. She hesitated, then took one slowly.

“What do you mean, she’s part of it?"

He grunted to himself.

“Maybe you two should have a long chat. A real one. Figure out what you’ve really got and be honest with each other.”

He studied her body language, her face. She seemed genuinely bothered at the idea of Piper being in trouble, which was an uplifting sign.

“I’m not ashamed of what I am,” she said after some moments of quiet. “But what I am could get people hurt. Killed. So I hide it. What else could I do?”

She looked back to him, eyes glassy. It could break his heart, if he had one.

“I love Goodneighbor,” she chuckled. “For all of its craziness, no one there is scared of the Institute. But I know I’m in Kleo’s terminal. I know I’m on some list somewhere of threats waiting to be set off. And if that Broken Mask incident in Diamond City says anything, I might not even be in control of myself when that happens. There’s real terror in that, don’t you think?”

“Why didn’t you let them give you new memories, then? You could be Magnolia without all that baggage.”

She sniffed at the question like it was rotten, festering. Like she’d been thinking it herself for as long as she’d been able to think.

“Because Magnolia is all that baggage, Mister Valentine. I get new memories, and I sing lies for the rest of my days. Or I don’t sing at all. And what’s more, the Institute wins, doesn’t it?”

Magnolia covered her face and brushed back her bangs, expression torn between exhaustion and defiance for the subject at hand.

“If anyone’s proof that synths are capable of being human, it’s probably you.”

She snapped her focus from the dark ceiling to him, and after a moment her lips pulled into a grateful smile, as if relieved that he could understand her position. This was more complicated than he had thought, more rooted in emotion than deception, more tragic, and he’d just squeezed it out of her needlessly.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come at you like that.”

She let go of a deep sigh.

“It’s alright. Maybe it was nice to get it off my chest.”

“Does anyone know?”

“Charlie does,” she nodded.

“Explains why he’s so protective of you.”

Her lips twitched.

“Not the mayor?”

“No. Well, Kleo figured it out at some point, but I don’t get the feeling she’d tell. Not unless I went crazy or something.”

He nodded at her as her eyes waned tiredly. She’d dream of unpleasant things. By afternoon tomorrow they will have made it to Diamond City.


End file.
